Singer-Songwriter Seb Lowe Gives Advice to Young Creatives
Seb Lowe is an emerging talent to look out for. We recently got the opportunity to sit down with Seb Lowe to chat about songwriting, politics, social media, and his career’s future. Below, you will find what he said about his songwriting process and advice for aspiring singer-songwriters.
TGZ: What is your songwriting process like?
Lowe: It depends on the kind of song that I’m writing. The songs I write for TikTok are very different from the songs that don’t go on TikTok. If I’m writing for TikTok, I’ll often find that if I’m on the bus or doing something where I’ve got time on my hands, I’ll get my notes app and write some lyrics. I have a massive sheet in my notes where I just write any potential lyrics. If I hear someone say something interesting and think “Oh, that’d be a good song lyric” then I just jot that down. I’ll get to my house, stab some chords, and sing the lyrics over them. With Tiktok, I focus very heavily on the lyrics and less so on the music. But when it’s other songs, which I don’t really post on TikTok, they tend to be less wordy so I think much more about the music. I find chords first and then put lyrics to them as opposed to putting music to words like I do for TikTok.
TGZ: What advice would you give to an aspiring songwriter?
Lowe: For me, what’s worked is just writing constantly. Whenever you get time to write a song, write a song. Because at the end of the day, you can have as many connections as you want or be very lucky, but people still need to want to listen to your music. When you release on Spotify, you want people to actually listen. So your songs have to be somewhat decent. So just write everything. Write everything that comes to your head. Even if it’s rubbish because at some point the rubbish will come out and you’ll start writing something that’s okay. So just write constantly and you’ll get better and better and then eventually be able to write something that you're proud of. I imagine that some people don’t enjoy songwriting because it feels like they don’t have anywhere to start. Sitting down and telling yourself that you’re going to write a song is a pretty daunting thing to do. But if you take the approach of writing a song when you feel like it or when inspiration hits rather than forcing yourself during designating a time, you’ll struggle less getting started. Sometimes I’ll try sitting down, forcing myself to write but what I come up with is never as good as it was when I’m doing nothing and out of nowhere every word just comes to me.